


voices on the windows, on the walls

by crowkiiing



Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: 31DaysOfApex, Confronting, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Talking, all that fun stuff!, charas mentioned but not in detail:, gibby / path / rev / crypto / bangalore / etc, lots of focus on the voices!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:41:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25120300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowkiiing/pseuds/crowkiiing
Summary: wraith can tune them out. normally. usually. but not today  -  they itch and they scratch and it hurts.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	voices on the windows, on the walls

**Author's Note:**

> done for 31 days of apex - day 6, noise. had feelings abt Wraith, ok.

Ever since she’s woken up in the labs, Wraith hasn’t gotten a single day of silence. 

**_[ HE’S BEHIND YOU. ]_ **

**_[ WATCH YOUR BACK. ]_ **

**_[ PEOPLE DIED HERE. APPROACH CAUTIOUSLY. ]_ **

**_[ AROUND THE CORNER. SHE’S THERE. SHE KNOWS. SHE’LL SHOOT. ]_ **

Even in the days in the labs, she remembers hearing them. Thrumming against the corner of her mind, pulsing against her skull. Faraway voices, like a distant daydream that was shoved and pushed aside to make room for fear. Some days she couldn’t sleep, curled up in a little ball and trying to stifle her sobs and begging someone out there to make it  _ stop.  _

It never stopped. 

It had all been a sea of noise. The first time she heard Voidwalker’s voice -  _ her  _ voice, stronger and more vicious - it had cut through the noise like a knife, a clear command.  **_[ KICK HIM. NOW. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? SHUT HIM UP. ]_ **

When she left the labs, they got louder. It isn’t just Voidwalker talking more, it’s her, her, her, her across different realities -  _ her.  _

Whenever she was in the ring, it was almost impossible to hear her teammates over the voices. Bloodhound would point out the way to an enemy, and Wraith wouldn’t be able to stop gritting her teeth or stop her head from pounding. 

She had found out a way to cope with it. Eventually. Wraith had found out that… hanging out with the other Legends put everything at bay. At least, temporarily. Sometimes Elliott talked too much, and it made everything dissolve into a distant buzz. Sometimes Natalie guided her alongside with how her fences worked, helped her tinker with the wiring, and it made the voices quiet. Sometimes Octane laughed a little too loud, and sometimes Bangalore hummed songs underneath her breath at the waking hours of sunrise, and sometimes. Sometimes it all descended into a silence in her head. 

Not now. 

Definitely not now. 

They’re all sat in Elliott’s bar. He’s shaking up something creative behind the bar, a request that Octane probably goaded him on to do. Lifeline is talking to Bangalore, and Natalie’s listening patiently between them, fiddling with a ball of rubber bands that she had created out of the pile next to Elliott’s bottles. Crypto is nowhere to be seen, but Gibraltar’s chatting up Loba and Elliott at the bar. 

Wraith mouths around the rim of her apple martini. She’s not talking to anyone, but she’s listening, letting the tide of conversation wash over her. Until:

**_[ YOU’RE NOT SAFE HERE. ]_ **

It comes suddenly, washing over her and making her head pound. Wraith scrunches her eyes shut, fingers going rigid around the neck of the cocktail glass. She can feel something burning in her eyelids. 

_ Focus. On the noise around you, not their voices - not her voice. Not your voice.  _

Distinctly, Wraith can hear Bangalore saying something about her brothers, an old family tradition they would do to send them off. She seems happy to talk about them despite the tightness in her shoulders whenever someone says that Jackie  **_[ JACKSON. ]_ ** is dead. Maybe it’s the alcohol - Elliott always seemed to brag that he could knock someone’s socks off with his drinks if they challenged him.

**_[ HE’S HERE. HE’S AROUND HERE. HE CAN SEE YOU. ]_ **

She bites down on her tongue without realizing. 

_ Focus. On something else. You’ve had no problem doing it before. Why now? _

Lifeline’s saying something about the day Wattson and her had gone out, now. But it’s not enough; it’s not blocking out anything; Wraith can feel her skull buzzing. 

The hand resting on the counter had curled without her even realizing, nails digging into the polished wood that Elliott so highly prizes and keeps clean. Dragging herself off the chair and leaving over half of her drink unfinished, Wraith staggers towards the other end of the table, where Loba, Elliott, and Gibraltar are. 

Loba actually pauses at the sight of Wraith, shoulders hunched and jaw set. That snowballs into Elliott pausing, setting his shaker tin outside. 

“Yo, Wraith, you good? You’re usually good at holding your alcohol - I didn’t, uh, drink you under the table, did I? That’s the saying, right?”

“It’s not.” Wraith’s vision blurs, and she lifts a hand to rub at her eyes. 

**_[ LOOK AT HER. SHE’S WATCHING. DON’T LET HER. SHE’LL KNOW. ]_ **

When Wraith lifts her gaze, Loba is in fact watching her. She hasn’t said anything yet, tapping her ring against the counter and tracing her nails across the rim of her glass. She doesn’t look like she’s touched her drink either. Wraith feels like she’s being torn apart then, the hungry eyes of the wolf picking her down to the bone. 

**_[ TELL HER TO STOP LOOKING. TELL HER. ]_ **

“Just. Keep talking,” Wraith says, her voice clipped. Elliott gives her another look up and down, and even Gibraltar seems concerned with how much she’s gritting her teeth. 

“You sure? Your eyes are-”

“Witt,” Wraith says, and there’s a bite to her tone that Loba raises her eyebrow at. “Talk. You do that a lot.”

Elliott clambers up then, casting another doubtful gaze at Gibraltar. “Uh, right! Talking. The stuff I’m good at. Yup! Just. Yeah, lemme talk-”

Gibraltar, thankfully, takes the lead. His accent and baritone is enough for the buzzing at the base of her skull to stop for a blissful few seconds, and Wraith closes her eyes. 

Just as she does, it -  **_[ LEAVE. YOU’LL BE USED. ]_ **

“Shut up,” Wraith hisses out, and she swears she hears the pause in conversation,  _ swears  _ she hears it, but there’s a louder noise, there’s louder things-

**_[ KEEP YOUR GUARD UP. ]_ **

**_[ THERE’S SOMEONE HERE YOU CAN’T TRUST. ]_ **

**_[ BEHIND YOU! ]_ **

Wraith spins so violently that she shoves Bloodhound back with her elbow. The hunter takes a few steps back, head tilting down to her elbow driven against their chest. She can feel the padding of fur, but her heart is still beating loud in her ears, something pulsating in her blood - 

Bloodhound tilts their head, and Wraith realizes she still has her elbow up. She lowers it, trying to force her entire body to relax, but her hands are claws by her side. Mumbling an apology to Bloodhound, she sidesteps, passing to their left. 

“I’m taking a break,” she says as she passes Bangalore, who lifts her shot glass in response. 

Solace City is a noisy city, she’ll give it that much. On other days, she would’ve appreciated it, but when she closes the door to the Paradise Lounge behind her, it only serves to make her head ache more. She can hear the blur of billboards in the distance and sighs, pressing her back to the stone walls of the bar and letting her head fall back. 

For a moment, she wants to ask the voices -  _ am I safe here?  _

She’s not sure if she wants to know the answer. Wraith has had five years of being unsafe, and for once, she doesn’t want to know. 

She just wants to be there. 

**_[ TO YOUR LEFT. ]_ **

She doesn’t open her eyes. 

She doesn’t need to. 

On days where the noise is bad, she always laid awake in her room in the legends’ house, listening for noise. Listening for anything that wasn’t the voices. She’d focus on the footsteps past her rooms. Bangalore always walked with a soldier’s gait, something that couldn’t be stamped out of her, proud and haughty. Pathfinder, Revenant, and Octane all have metal for sounds, but Revenant’s sounds like something hungry clawing to get out,  _ get out.  _ Pathfinder sounds robotics, like something moving to an algorithm, like Octane walked with too much speed in his step, like he’s eager to get in and get out. Never slowing down.

Crypto always did it carefully, slowly, but Wraith still heard him. Like he’s afraidis m of someone listening, like he’s afraid  _ she’s  _ listening. Gibraltar doesn’t hide his footsteps like Crypto does; there’s nothing light to them. And there’s always the click of Loba’s heels, although there’s nights where she’s not wearing them and she’s sneaking and - 

Those footsteps are Bloodhound. 

They close the door behind them gently, making sure it’s shut before they turn to her. 

“I told Bangalore I would be out here,” Wraith says, not looking at them. Instead, she looks towards the night sky. 

“You did,” they agree. “I was simply checking on a félagi. It is what the gods would want.”

“I’m fine,” but at that exact same moment, a bolt of pain shoots through Wraith’s skull, powerful enough that she slams her jaw shut and her teeth clack. 

Bloodhound does not berate her. Instead, they watch her, the reflection of the moon bright against the dark discs of their goggles, and cock their head. 

“Would you rather I leave you be?”

**_[ LET THEM GO. ]_ **

Wraith grits her teeth. “Give me a minute.”

And a minute they give her. Instead, they turn away from her, tilting their head up to the sky. 

“Máni is the god of the moon,” they say, looking towards the moon. “It is said that him and his  _ systir  _ were born at the same time, but he was born alongside the cosmos. Whenever I am alone, I remember that he is watching, alongside the Allfather. They will give me time. They will allow me peace and space, as long as I use my gifts from the gods to do their bidding. I am sure they will do the same for you.”

Wraith opens her eyes after scrunching them shut. “Thanks,” she says, although she doesn’t know what else to say. “Just… had a moment.”

She hasn’t told any of them about it. About the voices, about the pain, about the headaches - most of them just think she  _ knows.  _

Bloodhound nods. “If I may ask, is it similar to Wattson?”

**_[ THEY KNOW. THEY’RE ONTO US. ]_ **

“Sometimes,” Wraith says, although it’s not quite the same. She had been there when everyone was arguing, when everything was loud and Natalie had begged to be somewhere quiet, begged for them to  _ stop,  _ and Wraith had let her through a portal somewhere quieter. 

She wishes it was that easy, some days. 

They stand there in silence for a couple moments. Wraith’s shoulders are still hunched, frame undeniably tight, when Bloodhound says, “I hope whatever is burdening you lets you go.”

And for once, the voices quiet. 

“They’re on my side,” Wraith mumbles, almost under her breath. “I’m safer with them.”

Bloodhound cocks their head again. It seems to be a habit they do often whenever they’re perplexed. “But they bring you hurt, do they not? Your eyes… you are not free from the grip of something cruel.”

Wraith considers that for a few moments. When she speaks next, her teeth aren’t gritted and her eyes are clear - blue. “They did this to me.”

Bloodhound doesn’t ask the question, but she hears it. 

“I’ll find them some day. On some path, on some road. I’ll find them, and I’ll find my answers. But I can’t do that when every path I take is one that I’m warned against.”

“There is little to life if you do not take risks.”

Wraith glances at them, then, a side glance. 

“I do not know of what you speak of,” Bloodhound continues. “But there is little reward when you play it safe. That will leave you stuck. Do not listen to them all the time. You have no obligation to. You have said it yourself many times - do not trust simply your eyes. Trust your  _ hjarta,  _ as well as the hearts of many others, but do not ignore what you feel. A hunter trusts their own instincts first, not the ones of others. That will lead you to victory and conquest.”

For once, the voices don’t have anything in response. 

As if content with their piece, Bloodhound turns, framing a hand against the door as if to push it open. They then lift a hand to their helmet, moonlight still winking in their goggles, and salute kindly to Wraith. 

“Perhaps another day you will return to us. But take your time and bid it. You are welcome among us, whenever that be in person or in spirit.”

And just like that, they leave, closing the door behind them with a soft click. Wraith stares after them for a few moments, inhales deeply. and lets her head fall back against the wall of the Paradise Lounge. 

They’re quiet. 

And they’re quiet for the rest of the evening, even when Wraith comes back.


End file.
